Adding eXe contents to my site and other news

I have done some improvements to the site.

I found the settings to activate the wysiwig editor, it is handier type with that than with the plain html...

I was trying to look how to import a eXe content to the site: I did not find a solution to import it directly but I found a work-around. I export the pages as a web site, store them to an area which is visible on web and link to to my site. I have added some examples to my contributors to the left bar of the course admin area.

eXe still has the serious draw-back that I could not install it on linux, and if this is not sorted out, many of my contributors will simply not use it. My plan is to show some of the examples and offer them the possibility to produce web pages with it. The advantage would be that they could be tempted to use the tools for different activities and make them better structured (not just read this, but read this and reflect, reply, choose...). Otherwise they may be back to just writing the instructions to do something as before.

There is a habdy way to define the permissions so that only the participants and the training team will be able to see the wiki area and the submitted homework. The homework is now defined so that only the submitter and the training team sees his/her homework.

I start to be convinced that the site fullfils my criteria. It still needs some testing and it will be interesting to see how my content providers react to the learning module planning forms...

I will have a chat with Kalli today and get some feedback.

Getting further with my e-learning site

Now I have gained some experience with my site.

I have the general access level which lists all available courses (only one at the moment).
This is will be visible to everyone in our collaboration.

It gives access to the site for my pilot course. After the registration, the access will be limited to the participants only.

I have implemented an administration area for this course which includes the planning of the course and the activities. This will be limited to the project team.

I'm actively using the administration area and it gives some nice possibilities for the planning.
I will not give the course myself so planning is an important issue. As I know my dear colleagues, and I know that the material itself (slides, instructions etc) will not be ready well in advance before the course, I have setup a form which they have to fill to define what they actually plan to present in different modules and what exercises they will include (see an example of an empty form and filled in information). In this way, even if the material is not ready everyone knows what the others have planned.

The admin site works really well. I'm not so much convinced of the course site itself. The outcome can be quite nice but for putting in contents as web pages it seems to require some authoring tools which I do not have or writing wikis in pure html. I do not mind typing html but I'm afraid that not all my collaborators who would eventually use this site for e-learning courses are happy with that... Well, I'm often told that people can read code when I bug them with the requests on documentation - now I can tell them that you can type html...

It is however true that most of the material resides in our agenda system outside this site and we will just link there for slides and such. This site will be used mainly for the exercises. This is not only because these are the tools we have, but it is because the material will be public to all collaboration while the exercises and communications within the course are restricted to the participants only.

I have not been able to import the material built with eXe, which is a pity, it would have been nice to see if people like it. I will keep on exercising....

First experiments with the web sites

After some reflection, I made today my first experiments with the learning environment for the course.

To start with, I made a small conceptual map ;-) with the requires content and features.
I will add that later on.

For the site, my choices are limited by what is supported at CERN and what the users expect.

The content and functionality are obviously the main issues but the first visual impact cannot be ignored ("your readers are only a click away from your web site..."). Therefore some thoughts on that...
From the user point of view, the site should look familiar and and give a nice and clear visual impact. Although designing nice looking sites could be great fun, it is not the core of this project so I would rather use something which has a decent design and I do not have to worry about it too much.

I contacted CERN web services with my requirements and they adviced me to use SharePoint collaboration area which offers all the functionalities I need for a course.

So done, now I'm experimenting wih my site to see if I can build something reasonable.

It is not too bad, I do not know yet how to modify some items but I've contacted our helpdesk to learn more (they will probably tell me that I should have gone to a course organized on the subject last week...). I was able to add some items which I definetely think are necessary such
as a wiki area for participants, and I more or less know how to change the permission to enter to the different web areas - for the moment anonymous access is allowed.

At the moment, the most important area is the administration area where I will but the description of the different learning modules from the organizational point of view, i.e. what will be done and who will do it.

Le blog a été créé.

Voilá, Kati